Two thousand years ago, Christ, the great Lord of Love, through Master Jesus performed His sacrifice, incarnating Himself in order to assert this sublime principle and anchor it in the consciousness of Humanity, thus perfecting the Law of Moses.
As we know, His words caused great scandal among those who heard them, especially among the religious who considered them blasphemous and subversive, and it was because of these that He was put to death.
However, that fiery seed planted in the minds and hearts of those who received it changed history.
He gave a new Commandment: he preached the power of Love, of unreserved acceptance and self-giving; of the Love that is universal Brotherhood, that inspires to the great Service, that feeds the fire of the heart, that welcomes and preserves the divine impulse by expanding it to the Infinite and constantly restoring Unity; of the Love that is the principle that this solar System must attain and realise in Its present incarnation.
He said: “Love one another as I have loved you”, “Love thy neighbour as thyself”, “Love thy enemy”; exhortations, especially the latter, which are still considered unrealistic in our days, precisely because, although we try to understand their meaning, the common consciousness is still unable to contain their power.
In all likelihood, when – in preparation for the Last Supper – the Master instructed the Disciples to follow the man with the pitcher of water, He knew that His Message, conveyed at the dawn of the age of Pisces, could only be understood by Humanity at the time of the Water Bearer, which is now just around the corner, when, not surprisingly, His Reappearance is being invoked, which should mark a general spiritual advancement.
At present, as we know, despite the many expressions of forthright altruism and goodwill in the world, it is, for example, still commonly referred to as “love” a feeling that is often manifested in a selfish, possessive, jealous manner within the family, while that towards “others” is substantiated in a theoretically benevolent thought that shatters into a sort of more or less explicit annoyance when these “others” are demanding towards us. And on the subject of “turning the other cheek”, i.e. not responding to insults or wrongs that we suffered but seeking a calm dialogue to settle disputes, it is still often parents who teach their children to react with analogous violence to provocations.
“Let us turn back to the concept of love. In each book a considerable place must be allotted to that fundamental concept, especially because under the concept of love much of the opposite is understood. It is correctly pointed out that love is a guiding and creative principle. This means that love must be conscious, striving, and self-denying. Creativeness requires these conditions. And if love is marked by self-enfeeblement, disintegration, and service to self, it will not be the highest concept of humanity, which extols the concept of achievement. The heart filled to the brim with love will be active, valiant, and will expand to its capacity. Such a heart can pray without words and can bathe in bliss. How greatly in need is humanity of the realization of the fire of love! A purple star of the highest tension will correspond to this fire.” (Agni Yoga Series, Hierarchy § 280)
Consciousness blossoms in Love and there is always an enormous need for Love in the world, as a balm for hardship, injustice, loneliness, material and spiritual poverty, general disorientation, catastrophes, wars; for that Love which inflames hearts, broadens vision and kindles hope; for that Love which is not merely sentiment, desire or good intentions, but real Will-to-Good.
The Will-to-Good manifests itself as the evolution of consciousness proceeds. The Tibetan Master (Esoteric Astrology, p. 620) says that this aspect of the Will begins to be demonstrated by the achieving of self-consciousness; it is then demonstrated at the third initiation, when self-consciousness gives place to group consciousness; and it is demonstrated in the higher initiations, when God-consciousness is achieved.
The Will-to-Good is Love in action, bestowed spontaneously by a flaming heart which, forgetful of itself, constantly spreads out the treasures it contains; only thus will others, more precious, be lodged there, to be bestowed anew. Agni Yoga affirms, in this regard, that until everything is given one cannot receive.
It is through the Will-to-Good that one can express the force of Love, the energy of the second divine creative Ray, whose power is Sacrifice and which at our level manifests itself as consecration to Service. Christ said of Himself that He was “the last of servants”, the One who, as such, serves everyone. And Service is Joy which, according to the Master of Agni Yoga, is a special Wisdom.
“Let us accept love as the motive force in the expansion of consciousness. The heart will not be aflame without love; it will not be invincible, nor will it be self-sacrificing. So let us bring gratitude to every receptacle of love, for love lies on the border of the New World, where hatred and intolerance have been abolished. The path of love unfolds with the intensity of cosmic energy. So on this path everyone will find his place in the Cosmos. Not as dried leaves but as lotuses aflame will people find kinship with the Highest World.” (Agni Yoga Series, Heart § 243)
Love is the privileged channel for the divine Will, to which it is intimately bound and which it knows from the beginning. Love is the universal motive, it is the motor of Life; it is obedient, attentive, understanding, wise; it is that which realises Brotherhood, which makes things new and which is learned and spread precisely through the heart. Each oriented heart responds with different awareness to the divine Will, uniting the lesser to the Greater, the disciple to the Master, in the infinite chain that connects the Worlds.
Therefore, it is through the common, consecrated Heart, whose light shows the path of Truth like a beacon, that the Will-to-Good is expressed. The Heart is a Magnet, the central power of Life, which gathers and puts together the particles destined for union, and it is upon this process of constructive fusion that all cosmic activity is based. The beating of each Heart is connected to the rhythm of the Cosmos and relentlessly reveals it, evoking harmonies and consonances.
“How little do people reflect upon those fundamentals which are shown to be the foundations of construction, whereas this process is a most essential one. Into the foundation of construction is laid a most substantial and steadfast affirmation. Of all the supports the most fiery one is the magnet of the heart. To exclude it means to leave the structure without a soul, for the magnet of the heart contains all the cosmic saturations. The magnet of the heart is the synthesis of all subtle energies. The magnet of the heart consists of the accumulations of thousands of years; in it is expressed Karma and attraction. Just as it is impossible to replace the sun, so also does the heart remain a powerful creator. Thus on the path to the Fiery World it must be especially remembered that the fiery magnet of the heart is the basis of construction.” (Agni Yoga Series, Fiery World III § 372)
Today the Disciples who have group consciousness, in greater numbers than ever before, are under way towards the Path of Initiation. They are beginning to recognise themselves as one world Server who, taking on the invocation of Humanity, stands in a golden way between the latter and the Hierarchy, thus beginning to respond, however faintly, to the Centre where the Will of God is known (Shambhala) and to Its Purpose, that is, to the monadic energy of Power.
They are moved by the Will-to-Good and stand firm, holding the “focal point”, without allowing themselves to be distracted by the difficulties of personal existence or world events, which is not easy in this time of transition from one era to another that causes changes faster than our capacity to assimilate them and in which great confusion reigns, fuelled also by the excess of information from the most disparate sources, where any possibility of knowing even a glimmer of truth is lost. Many are then vehemently divided, taking opposite sides of any issue, where everyone believes they know the underlying ‘truth’ of different events. But Truth is not of this world…
The Disciples, however, learn to “fly over troubled waters without wetting their wings”, to operate in the world without being of the world. By subtle ways, on the causal level, they commit themselves to help, to bring Harmony and to build the future, asserting the part of the Plan they have intuited for Humanity, certain that in this way glimpses of the Purpose may be perceived.
They begin to take the field in an orderly manner, with determination, and, recognising the Adversary who constantly seeks to divide, to confuse, to highlight and encourage ugliness and violence everywhere, they learn together to confront it, sending Love, to weaken it with the strength of a benevolent smile, to dazzle it with the splendour of the True, with the power of the Beauty of a wild flower or of the starry Sky, and disorient it with the harmony of their choral song, continuing to “serve indifferently in the valley”.
“Learn not to count days and not to notice years, because there is no difference when you are in the great expanse of Service. One should learn to feel oneself beyond trivial usualness and to adhere in spirit to the manifested world of Beauty. Let us proceed together to where there are no boundaries or end, where one can transform each beneficent gleam into the radiation of a rainbow of blessing to the worlds.” (Agni Yoga Series, Hierarchy § 177)
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Note: This article is published on the occasion of today’s conjunction between the Lord of Love and Wisdom, Jupiter, 2nd Ray, and the sacred Luminary of Will and Power, Vulcan, 1st Ray, and follows the quadrature between Jupiter and Pluto, non-sacred 1st Ray planet (see). See also “The Light of Revelation”.
